


The Lost

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dinosaurs, Exploration, F/M, Lost tribes/civilizations, Magic, Survival, desert-island style romance, terrarium type world, time mismatched protagonists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 11:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine





	1. Chapter 1

Were Charlotte born a few decades later, she might have thought "the house began to pitch" when the ground below her shook that day. But as she was a child born of the last century, all that went through her head that fateful day was fear. 

It was about seven in the morning when it happened. Charlotte had been up preparing breakfast. Just bread and butter and jam, as usual. Father was still asleep, for he often stayed in bed late when they were home instead of traveling. She had just gone to retrieve the knife to slice the bread when the walls of the simple frame house had begun to quiver, and the wooden floor below her feet to swoop. 

The thundering hit her ears like a million shouts, and she tried to cry out for Father, but her cries were unheeded. She never heard his voice again. 

She had still be grasping the knife tightly when the roof caved, the force pushing her to the floor and knocking her out. 

She awoke some time later, this time to carefully ordered chaos. It was still, to be sure, but everything in the house had been tossed about. Part of the roof was broken over the kitchen, so she quickly made her way to the sitting room. The room's two windows were blown in, and though they let in the brightest sunlight, Charlotte was not reassured.

She rushed rushed quickly to Father's room, stomach sinking. As entered, the furniture thrown all around kept alive the fear in her chest. 

Fear that was confirmed when she noticed the pair of legs sticking out from beneath the side of the bed. 

Charlotte hardly has to pull on the legs at all before she has enough confirmation that the contents of her stomach upend themselves. 

Father was dead. His head bashed in by some flying object. He was already cold, God, how long had she been out?

But any questions were temporarily banished from her mind by grief, Charlotte sank to the ground against the edge of the bed and cried. 

She hadn't even looked outside any of the windows yet. 

Eventually, Charlotte's grieving is broken by another loud sound. 

She looks up quickly. The big window in the bedroom had been broken in too, and a large bird had come through it. 

Charlotte stares. She's never seen a bird like this before. It was easily knee high to her, with a long pink neck that curved downward into a large beak. It's legs were short, like a chicken's, but with noticeable thorny talons. It's feathers were of nearly every color, layered on top of each other. 

Her curiosity is stalled when she realizes the bird has flown and landed on Father's body, and begun to peck at the soft flesh of his neck. 

"Get away!" Charlotte shouts, jumping to her feet. Realizing she is still holding the knife from the kitchen, she lunges at the bird holding the blade outward. 

"GET AWAY!". 

The bird squacks, turns and flies back out the window, clearly seeking an easier meal. 

Charlotte heaves. The bird has just woken her up, and she takes inventory of the situation. 

All she has on is a thin cotton dress. Her hair is loose and she touches a wet spot, probably from the head blow that knocked her out. Her stockings are torn and her feet bleeding. She must have stepped on some broken glass. She needs to make sure the stove isn't still on. She had to do something about Father's body, or more animals will come. 

She uses a towel from the washbasin to wipe the blood from her hair. There's a small lump on her scalp, but she doesn't feel dizzy or confused. Her own bedroom is trashed as well, but she can still find her things. She changes into the trousers and linen shirt she wears when traveling with Father in undeveloped areas. After cleaning and bandaging her feet, she pulls on her heavy boots. She might have to hike into town to find help. She wonders if whatever hit the house hit town too.

She grips the knife still in her hand. Passing through the kitchen, she grabs the flint-and-steel used to light the stove. 

The front door is still locked, and it takes her a few minutes to find the key in the chaos. 

There are a million thoughts running through Charlotte's mind, of all the things she might find when she opens the door.

The sun shining down on a mostly pristine, tropical-looking forest is not one of them. 

Charlotte is, for a minute, transfixed. She's only seen trees like this on expeditions with Father, certainly not anywhere close

But more to the point, she knows for a fact that there were no trees on the road they lived. At all, much less ones like this. And she knows for sure that wherever she is looks absolutely nothing like the little road that ran into town. 

All around her is trees, as far as they eye can see. If she listens closely she can hear the sound of birds singing, not the familiar squacks of a sparrow or bluejay either. There's the sound of running water somewhere near, even though their house was built upon the midwestern plains. 

She spins around to see what has become of their little one-story farm house. 

The area of the roof caved in over the kitchen is worse than she thought, and all of the windows have been caved in, but it's the foundation that truly shocks her. 

It looks as though the house had been ripped clean away from the earth and tossed. One side of it is tipping slightly, looking as though it landed on top of rocks. 

And the rocks...she’s never seen any like them by their home. Red rocks, in sizes as small as sand and big as boulders. A few black shiny ones, like her and Father had seen near volcanos, The grass...or ferns, or whatever they were called were also unfamiliar. The trees...she’d seen trees like them in South America, but not spaced like this, more widely with leaf-crowded canopies far above. 

Charlotte steps back, and slowly turns in a circle. 

It’s all gone. The house’s foundation, the road. Nothing here is anything like their home on the Kansas plain. 

Another sound gets her attention. She jerks violently, and looks down at the ground where the sound originated. 

It’s an….animal of some kind. About as long as a wild turkey, though not as tall. It was dark green, scaly like a lizard. It had a tail and stood up on two small clawed feet. And two short, but equally sharp looking clawed hands. 

Charlotte’s father had been a scholar, and had raised her to be both studious and curious. Both of these traits preceded the far more necessary caution in the situation, causing her to reach out, muttering “What are you?...” before the creature hissed, and slash at her hand, leaving a series of bright red scratches on her left hand. She jumped away, tumbling to the ground. 

The creature sniffed, and then turned and left the clearing. 

Wherever Charlotte was, she was far from home.


	2. Chapter 2

Letter 1:

I don’t really know why I’m writing this. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see anyone who will read them again. But it’s all I can think to do. Father had a number of empty journals in his study, as well as loose paper. I’ve gone through everything else in the house. 

The first day was terrifying. I wandered in the jungle until it started to get dark. I started crying a few times, because I couldn’t find anything at all, any signs of anything. 

When it got dark, I went back to the house, but more of those lizard-things had showed up. I tried to hide in the house, but they’re small enough to come through the windows. 

I slept outside in a tree. 

The next day, I lit a fire to try and cook something and I realized that those things really don’t like the flames, they stay far away. I lit it outside, and slept in the house. I’ll have to figure out something else, I’m too scared of the fire spreading. I saw something like that once, with Father on one of his study journeys, an entire town taken out by a wildfire. 

I buried Father on the third day. It wasn’t very elegant or peaceful. It took me more than an hour to dig the grave, and moving him was nearly impossible. I had to roll him onto a sheet and drag that, while trying to keep the birds away. The smell was overwhelming, and his body was nearly unrecognizable. Part of me is glad. It made it easier to remember that what made him my father is gone, just his flesh left behind. There weren’t many bugs attracted to him, thank goodness. I wonder why though. 

I marked his grave with a rock, and said something like a prayer. I was baptized, and I’ve been to services, but Father was never a very religious man. He did believe though, so I hope he’s with God now, instead of wherever I am.

On the fourth day, I found Father’s axe in the back and decided to do some exploring. 

Less than five minutes from the house, the jungle stops abruptly at the edge of a wide, fast moving river. I was glad, because the second day I completely emptied our well jug. I drank as much as I could hold, only later realizing how badly it could have made me sick. I felt fine though, so I guess luck was on my side. 

After gorging myself, and filling my canteen, I continued in the other direction. 

The jungle continues for another three-quarters of a mile or so before stopping. The grass ends abruptly before a steep cliff. It overlooks a...I’m not sure if canyon or valley is the right term. Parts are green and lush like a valley, and not all the sides are steep and sudden. Other parts are more barren, desert looking. But I can’t quite tell if it’s dug out of the earth, or formed between two hills that I just can’t see the crests too. I can see other formations in the rock along the horizon- sharp, and pointed, but they too descend back into the basin and it seemingly continues beyond where my eye can see. I think there’s a flash of purple along the far side, but it might just be a mirage. There’s something wrong with the sunlight here.

I can see everything from up here. I can see it well. But I’m not sure I believe what I see. 

Father and I have visited with the men who dug up the bones, assembled the skeletons, gave the creatures their names. I know that they’re supposed to be old, older than the oldest human, older than any human. They’re supposed to have been dead for millennia. 

But the rough, scaly lizards in the valley below look just like the drawings those naturalists and fossil hunters made up. Beasts bigger than cows or moose, with scales and claws and teeth. The same back ridges and neck frills and pointed tusks. Beyond the other peak, I swore I could even see one’s very long neck. Dinosaurs. 

They look tiny to me from up here. I wonder maybe if those lizard-things at night are like them, some kind of dinosaur that people just haven’t dug up and named yet. 

It’s so strange. I don’t know where I am, but I’m still speaking like I’m at home. It’s all I can really do I guess. 

***

As her father was an avid follower of fossil hunters, Charlotte did indeed know the names of many of the creatures she could see in the area below she would come to dub the Teacup. Stegasaurus, Diplodocus, Triceratops. In fact, she had been to the lecture by the man who just last year had dubbed the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex. There were others she could not, from the birdlike raptors that she battled above the edge, There were the other mammals too, the small prehistoric rodents, and the rough, bony early horse, that she paid no mind to. 

But there were others that neither her, nor any human from where she came from could know. The small ponds in the Teacup surrounded by small flickering beings that she would have mistaken for fireflies and never looked closely enough to identify as fairies. The horselike creature in the same pond with the tail of a dolphin. And most of all, the creature in the mountain far across the horizon, by the crystal spire she had ignored, that could even, when provoked from it’s slumber, breathe fire. 

***

Letter #2

Today when I left the house, one of those lizard things attacked me. I guess I was just sick of so many things piling up that I swung Father’s axe as hard as I could. Took his head clean off. 

Then I threw up. I’ve never been able to stomach hunting. I know people all over the world make it their livelihood, but I cannot understand how it can be done without sacrificing some of your humanity. 

Then I realized that I had better do something with the corpse or it would attract some of its companions. And while I haven’t seen any vultures in whatever this place may be, they are surely a possibility. 

So I dragged the body to the edge of the water. It was large, but smaller than a young deer, so easy enough to manage by myself. 

The knife broke the scaly skin and split open the beast’s belly easy enough. Cutting out the entrails made me retch again, so I buried them. 

I had no anatomical guide to the innards, so I just cut and pulled and did what I could to get the hide away from the meat. The fire I built cooked up the meat well enough- more than enough for me for that day alone. I must look into some way of drying or preserving it somehow. 

How quickly it seems I’ve become accustomed to the idea of killing for food. 

I soaked the hide the best I could and left it out to dry. I have neither the tools or the skills to tan it properly, but it should dry it and keep the bugs away, and it might prove of some use. Lizard skins back home are made into luxury items. 

How quickly my mind has switched to survival mode here. I don’t even know where here is. Last night, in the house, I found Father’s train tickets to New York. Some lecture or conference. I can’t even remember what it was for. This world has hypnotized me, I tried to think if there was someway I could get away, get home, but no way out has come to me. There are still tribes around the world who live as I have been, scavenging, hunting and gathering. So much of society looks down upon them, calls them primitive, barbarians. 

Yet here I am, becoming a hunter, as clumsy and unlearned in this world as a newborn baby.


End file.
